I just got dial-up service at my apt. (&(^* verizon cancelled my service earlier than they were supposed to, but that’s a pit thread), and my computer does not detect my modem.
I called verizon help, but had to use my cell phone, and kept getting cut off - either way, the guy who was “helping” me kept telling me to double-click icons I didn’t even have, so he wasn’t much help at all anyway.
I tried the modem troubleshooting (sorry, I know I’m kinda vague here, but I’m at work so I don’t have access to my home computer, and was rather frustrated while trying to do this last night). I know it DOES have a modem, as I made sure of that when I bought it. It’s a Dell, and runs Windows XP if that helps.
Arg! So frustrating - I’m moving in two weeks, but I need the service b/c of an online class.
About two or three weeks ago, I finally had enough of trying to find a possible virus and/or trojans on my PC at home, and my wife wiped the system. We got everything loaded, but when we set up our internet connection, a modem was not detected. It was fine before we scrubbed, but somehow, wasn’t working afterwards. It just up and died, I guess. My wife gave herself fits trying to figure that out (among other things), and we just went ahead and spent $30 on an external modem. Haven’t had a modem related problem since.
It used to be that a modem was a modem was a modem. Your only real choice was whether it was internal or external. Other than that they were all basically the same.
These days though, a modem isn’t necessarily a modem. In fact it usually isn’t a modem. Usually, it’s only a small part of a modem. Where did the rest of it go? The answer is they decided to emulate part of the modem using the driver software. When your computer accesses the modem, instead of hardware responding, the driver takes over and does the same thing that the hardware would have done. At some point though you actually need to generate signals on the phone line, so there is still some hardware left on the modem card.
Windows XP knows about modems. If you have a real hardware modem it has everything it needs to talk to it. But XP doesn’t know squat about an emulated modem. In order for XP to recognize the sorta kinda almost a modem card as a modem, you need to install the drivers for it, which contain all of the software that emulates the rest of the modem. When Mrs Casey wiped the disk, she also got rid of the driver. If she had managed to find the right driver and installed it for the modem, it would have likely worked again.
It’s probably a similar issue for the OP. Did the Dell originally have XP and did the modem come with the computer? If so then you can probably download the correct driver right from Dell’s web site. If not then you may have to do a bit of searching to find the right driver.
You should be able to download the modem driver at work and save it to a disk.
Another possibility is to look at the CDs that came with your Dell computer. One of them should have on it the drivers for the factory installed hardware. Try to download and save the driver on a disk, though, because this means you will get the most up to date version of the driver.
Ah, that makes sense - I still have all of the CDs that came w/ my 'puter, so hopefully it’s on one of those. (I haven’t needed any of them at all before this).
I should really learn a bit more about computers, maybe I wouldn’t get myself into situations like this
